On the Couch by Alisa Kwitney

After going for greater than a yr with out a date -- a checklist in ny urban -- Marlowe Riddle has eventually met a broodingly attractive, sharply clever guy who's essentially drawn to making greater than well mannered dialog. the single challenge: Joseph Kain is an NYPD detective sincerely less than the incorrect effect that Marlowe is a decision woman. yet whereas Marlowe does take cash for spending time with strangers in her pricey higher West facet residence, she's a psychologist -- now not Manhattan's solution to the Mayflower Madam! A truth she has no purpose of telling Joe ... at the very least now not until eventually she finishes her examine undertaking at the "Behavioral results of Disguising Identity." yet Marlowe's no longer the single one attempting to secretively achieve details ... and it truly is turning into more and more doubtful who's seducing whom. simply because occasionally the one option to examine what a guy quite wishes ... is to get him at the sofa.

The hot York occasions bestselling writer brings again the Walker relatives in a multilayered mystery during which murders earlier and current attach the lives of 3 households each summer season, in an occasion that's venerated in the course of the Tohono O'odham kingdom, the Queen of the evening flower blooms within the Arizona desolate tract.

Every thing you recognize approximately vampires is incorrect, as suffering actress Esther Diamond discovers after taking a task as a sufferer within the Vampyre, an off-Broadway cult hit in long island. not just is she besieged via fang-wearing vampire groupies, fanatical anti-vampire activists, and the bloodsucking paparazzi, yet she additionally has to place up with broody lead actor Daemon Ravel, who claims to be a true vampire.

Carl understands greater than so much how demanding it may be to discover one’s position in a less than perfect global. deserted through his mom, scorned by way of his father, cuckolded by way of his spouse, too tall, too naive, too unfortunate, even the canine are guffawing at the back of his again. Carl has one great thing going for him and that’s his pals. They’re beneficiant with suggestion and classes.

Henry Cadmus grew up on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. yet Henry's stories have been faraway from idyllic. this day, even supposing Henry has noticeable firsthand the horrors of struggle, the ghastly photographs that hang-out his desires is one he affiliates along with his adolescence. .. and the island: a snarling pig-man preserving a cleaver; a jackal-headed girl on a excessive balcony, dripping blood; unusual occult rituals.

Nitsa said she felt I should know that our classmates considered me emotionally aloof, because it might have bearing on my future success as a clinician. ) I wasn't completely sure why people perceived me this way; in high school, I had been considered cool and unflappable, rather than flat and affectless. Maybe the difference was attributable to the fact that as a teenager, my social life had consisted mainly of drinking, smoking pot, dancing, and fooling around. When you're a teenager, no one minds if you're more of a listener than a talker, but by the time you reach your thirties, you're supposed to have mastered the art of rendering your life history into easily digestible sound bites.

Don't worry," I told him. " *Marlowe* Savannah LaBrecque arrived late. My first impression of my new client was that she was extremely pretty, in her early twenties, and probably an actress, as she was wearing what amounted to a costume: a black riding jacket and fox-hunting boots over slim black slacks, her light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail to show off her even-featured, exquisitely made-up face. All that was missing was the crop to beat the horse; perhaps that was stashed in the Prada bag.

Had it been an option, I would've gone back to the small town that had felt so confining back when I was in high school, in order to discover that the juvenile delinquent from chem lab was now the town sheriff, still unattached and still carrying a torch for me. But this part of New York City was my hometown, and I couldn't imagine life as a single being easier anywhere else. Besides, I couldn't drive, which limited my options. Feeling a bit better from the shower, I dried myself off, pulled on a gray sweatshirt and black jeans, and dried my shoulder length hair without bothering to style it.